WASHINGTON (AP) — The brain’s nerve cells communicate by firing messages to each other through junctions called synapses, and problems with those connections are linked to disorders like Alzheimer’s and epilepsy. Now Yale University researchers have developed a way to picture synapses in living brains. The technique reported Wednesday, using PET scans, is highly experimental […]

NEW YORK (AP) — A standard brain scanning technique is showing promise for helping doctors distinguish between patients in a vegetative state and those with hidden signs of consciousness. A study released Thursday is the latest to investigate using technology to help meet the challenge of making that distinction, which now is generally based on […]

Jean Hanvik decided that enough was enough. When a painful intestinal inflammation flared in 2014, the 55-year-old benefits communications consultant balked at her doctor's recommendation that she undergo another abdominal CT scan — her fourth in eight years.

The waiting list has been growing at the Ottawa Fertility Centre since the Ontario government announced earlier this year it would begin paying for in vitro fertilization for women under 43 by the end of the year. As of this week, the fertility centre will start calling patients on that list to begin treatment under the new […]

MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA—The man who would become known as Patient No. 1 was a 47-year-old farmer who had forgotten how to farm. His name was Pedro Julio, and his family had travelled through the mountains, on horseback and then by bus, to San Vicente de Paul hospital in Medellin. They wanted to know if Pedro Julio was developing the terrible sickness that had robbed his mother and grandmother of their senses. La bobera, they called it. The foolishness.
Dr. Francisco Lopera was the physician on staff that day, a few weeks before Christmas in 1984. He was a young neurology resident whose boyhood obsession with UFOs had sparked an early interest in astronomy, until he decided the mysteries of the human brain were more interesting.
Pedro Julio was a mystery that would define his career.
Lopera had never seen dementia in patients so young. Soon after, a lottery ticket seller from another rural town arrived with the same symptoms and family history. He was 45.
Intrigued, Lopera travelled through the countryside to ...

A Calgary woman with cervical cancer has waited months to find out whether she needs more chemotherapy because her PET-CT scans have been postponed — due to a radioactive dye shortage also affecting others in the province.

Researchers at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Washington on Wednesday updated ongoing research with three experimental drugs that aim to fight Alzheimer's by targeting a sticky protein that clogs the brain.

WASHINGTON (AP) — To sleep, perchance to… ward off Alzheimer’s? New research suggests poor sleep may increase people’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease, by spurring a brain-clogging gunk that in turn further interrupts shut-eye. Disrupted sleep may be one of the missing pieces in explaining how a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, a sticky protein called beta-amyloid, starts […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sticky plaque gets the most attention, but now healthy seniors at risk of Alzheimer’s are letting scientists peek into their brains to see if another culprit is lurking. No one knows what actually causes Alzheimer’s, but the suspects are its two hallmarks — the gunky amyloid in those brain plaques or tangles […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sticky plaque gets the most attention, but now healthy seniors at risk of Alzheimer’s are letting scientists peek into their brains to see if another culprit is lurking. No one knows what actually causes Alzheimer’s, but the suspects are its two hallmarks — the gunky amyloid in those brain plaques or tangles […]